Victorian Literature and Modern China

In line with the Global Circulation Project, this paper addresses the meaning transformation of Victorian novel Yeast in modern Chinese context. Power relations under the reprocessing of Yeast are set out firstly. Literary openness of Yeast and the related heterogeneous parody are then discussed. Drawing support from reader response theory, the paper henceforth explores the discursive carnival of Yeast’s hermeneutics. Finally the research anchors at the bay of a grand ethnographic setting where dwells critical responses on Yeast. Through discussions based on the novel, Chinese readers know themselves through alterity. The research suggests a relief map of the ecology of Victorian literature in a globalized context. The research finds its ethnographic root and textual preoccupation from a three year long fieldwork.